Phantom Thieves of Hope - A Danganronpa X Persona 5 Story.

Chapter 37: The Kamukura Project

Re_ Despair-Syndrome - Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair.

"These stairs go down for a while..." Kaede, who took the lead of the charge, descended down the multiple flights of stairs with her fellow Thieves in tow, using her phone light to guide her way, "whatever was down here must have been important if the academy runners were trying to keep it secret."

"Assuming the Committee really are the ones behind it," Toko remarked, "for all we know, this could be someone else's schemes."

"Whoever or whatever may be behind this, there's a significant lack of dust and grime on these stairs," Kyoko observed pointing at their feet, "that implies that this isn't some ancient passage that we've stumbled upon. This was used very recently."

"You guys don't think we might run into some unsavory customers down here, do you?" Monomi asked. Kyoko shook her head.

"Even if we do, don't worry. We'll simply tell them that we stumbled upon this place by chance and decided to investigate," she said, "after all, we're not lying about that. Plus...I brought this for good measure."

Monomi and the others became quite alarmed when Kyoko whipped out an electric taser and switched it on to show it off. Nobody decided to comment on why she had it and continued descending.

After a short time, the group of 6 finally descended the stairs and came to a big iron door with an electric card scanner panel next to it, as well as a speaker.

"Well, suffice to say if anyone was home, they would have spotted us by now..." Shuichi observed, pointing upwards at a rather obvious security camera suspended above the door, "What do we do now?"

"Well, we can't get in without the card," Toko scowled, "are we really already done here?"

"Not to worry! Leave this to your teacher!" Monomi beamed. She hopped out of Makoto's hoodie and bounded onto the panel, holding onto it tightly with her bunny paws.

Everyone watched patiently as Monomi ripped the panel off of the wall with her paws, and then started to play around with the wires inside. A few of them were scared she might accidentally electrocute herself, but she seemed rather unphased and unworried about the whole ordeal. It took longer than anyone would have liked, but at the same time, there was little Monomi could do with the panel when she was like this.

Nevertheless, there was suddenly a loud *DING!*, and just like that, the door slid open, with Monomi hopping back to the ground.

"And there we go~!" she lifted her nose to the sky in pride, "this is the art of a TRUE Phantom Thief."

"Awesome! Thanks, Monomi!" Makoto gave her a thumbs up, "You're the best!"

"Ohohoho, no, no, it was nothing!" Monomi raised her head even more, positively glowing with ego, "Let us go. There's an investigation to be done."

Everyone walked through the door in single file, with Monomi choosing to stay on the ground for now in case she picked up any static while working; not wanting to electrocute Makoto by accident.

Upon stepping into the room, the group saw many desks, cabinets, and other such apparatus you would find in a typical office. Yet despite that, the room was rather barren and open-spaced. Shuichi immediately went over to some of these and started to poke through them, taking out items and putting them back in, bit by bit.

"I expected more. People were definitely working down here, but there's not much here to go off of," Kaede remarked, "are we sure this place is really in operation?"

"Don't be misled," Kyoko replied, "just because there's nothing out of the ordinary here, doesn't mean there wasn't. Look here..."

Kaede followed her finger line when she pointed at the ground in the corner. When she shone her phone's light on the ground where she pointed, she saw that the dust and dirt on the concrete ground were weirdly formed, like something big had been there, but was recently moved.